Kukla's Korner Hockey

Darcy Regier never came across as an unseemly character, so you wanted to take him at his word Tuesday when he insisted there were no ulterior motives for waiving Tim Kennedy four days after the South Buffalo native was awarded a one-year contract worth $1 million in arbitration.

Regier said he held no resentment toward Kennedy after he had the audacity to challenge the Sabres over money. The general manager made it clear that he was not intending to send a message to other players in the future. The decision to buy out the hometown winger was just, well, you know, business.

Comments

No… because Tim Kennedy isn’t a very good hockey player. Thus, nobody picked him up off of waivers because he isn’t worth 1 million per year. Also the Sabres have other forwards coming up from the AHL that are, well, better (Ennis, also a left wing, 9 points in 10 games last year). The only reason this is even a story is because he is from Buffalo, and so Buffalo media is upset a hometown boy got waived. Bucky Gleason is a pretty awful reporter if he really can’t figure out why they waived him. The qualifying offer they presented him was a two way contract, meaning they were more than likely going to send him back to Portland if he signed it. There is simply no room for Tim Kennedy on the Sabres unless they want to be not as good as they could be.

. Thus, nobody picked him up off of waivers because he isn’t worth 1 million per year.

Why would any team pick him up when they know they can negotiate their own price with him? They also know that he’s going to be getting buyout money, so he’s probably going to take less anyway. It reeks of the Sabres being cheap, whether they intended it to or not.

pens fan in baltimore, if teams thought he was worth a million a year wouldn’t they be worried about other teams thinking the same thing? Why risk a bidding war if more than one team is interested when you can just snag him off of waivers. The fact that he cleared it is very telling. It appears he isn’t NHL quality, I watched all the NHL games he played in, have you? If not, go watch them, kid has heart, but he just isn’t that good.

If it is cheap to waive a contract instead of pay the full contract only to have the player play in the AHL anyway, then yes, the Sabres are cheap. But I have to think most teams in the same position would do the same, otherwise, instead of being labeled cheap they would be labeled… dumb. Kennedy lost his spot on the roster last year when Ennis came up and outplayed him.